Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a storage medium, and a control method.
Description of the Related Art
An information processing apparatus that communicates with an external apparatus has been proposed. The above-described information processing apparatus executes processing for searching for a communication partner apparatus (apparatus that can be communicated with by the information processing apparatus) before a communication is started. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-39416 describes an information processing apparatus that discovers an apparatus that can be communicated with by the information processing apparatus by a multicast search and a unicast search.
In general, the information processing apparatus can discover an apparatus that is outside of the subnet to which the information processing apparatus belongs by unicast search processing. However, to execute the unicast search processing, specific information (such as the IP address) of the search target is needed.
The information processing apparatus described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-39416 obtains specific information (IP address) used for the unicast search processing by multicast search processing. However, in general, the multicast search processing only allows the information processing apparatus to discover an apparatus inside the subnet to which the information processing apparatus belongs. Consequently, a problem with the information processing apparatus described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-39416 is that it can't discover an apparatus outside the subnet to which the information processing apparatus belongs, even by using unicast search processing.